Abraham Lincoln (February 12, 1809 - April 15, 1865) was the 16th President of the United States. He opposed the expansion of slavery and oversaw the Union war effort during the American Civil War. He selected the generals and approved their strategy; selected senior civilian officials; supervised diplomacy, patronage and party operations; rallied public opinion through messages and speeches such as the Gettysburg Address; and took personal charge of plans for the abolition of slavery and the econstruction of the Union. He was assassinated as the American Civil War
ended by John Wilkes Booth at Ford’s Theater.
Lincoln began his political career in 1832 at the age of 23 with a campaign for the Illinois General Assembly. In 1837 he became a lawyer by the Illinois bar. He later served four successive terms in the Illinois House of Representatives, beginning in 1834. In 1837 he made his first protest against slavery in the Illinois House, stating that the institution was "founded on both injustice and bad policy". In 1846, Lincoln was elected to one term in the U.S. House of Representatives.
Lincoln's eloquence transformed him into anational political star in 1858 when Stephen A. Douglas ran for senate re-election. The Lincoln-Douglas debate, a nationally noticed discussion on the issues that threatened to split the nation in two, forced Douglas to propose the Freeport Doctrine.
On November 6, 1860, Lincoln was elected the 16th President of the United States as the first Republican President and served two terms. In his First Inaugural Address, Lincoln declared, "I hold that in contemplation of universal law and of the Constitution the Union of these States is perpetual. Perpetuity is implied, if not expressed, in the fundamental law of all national governments", arguing further that the purpose of the United States Constitution was "to form a more perfect union" than the Articles of Confederation which were explicitly perpetual, and thus the Constitution too was perpetual.
In a final
attempt to unite the Union and prevent the looming war, Lincoln supported the proposed Corwin Amendment to the constitution, of which he had been a driving force. It would have explicitly protected slavery in those states in which it already existed, and had already passed both houses. Lincoln adamantly opposed the Crittenden Compromise, however, which would have permitted slavery in the territories, renewing the boundary set by the Missouri Compromise and extending it to California
The American Civil War, 1861-1862, was bitter sectional conflict within the United States of America after 11 southern states declared their secession
from the Union and formed the Confederate States of America. As a war measure Lincoln passed the ‘Emancipation Proclamation’ freeing the slaves to weaken the rebellion by destroying the economic base of its leadership class. With the Emancipation Proclamation issued in two parts on September 22, 1862 and January 1, 1863, Lincoln made the abolition of slavery a goal of the war. Lincoln addresses the issue of his consistency (or lack thereof) between his earlier position and his later position on emancipation in an 1864 letter to Albert G. Hodges.
Excerpted from Wikipedia
